“I delivered this shit. I know what it does, what to look for, the itching, the unusually good moods…” I inched toward the exit. “The viz game, you were high, weren’t you?”
He flinched. “I… I hardly took any… hours before.”
I almost wished he would have lied. Not only because he shouldn’t be on this shit but also we had fun. He had fun with all of us, laughing, messing around, and I thought I saw a new side of him. I suppose I had, but it wasn’t entirely him.
“I should have known,” I growled, holding the pack close to my chest. “I should have seen it. Maybe I did, but I didn’t think you’d actually… I thought you were clean.”
“The number of jokes you made about it says otherwise.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did,” he laughed, sounding somewhere between delirious and annoyed. He had a blaster on him that I kept a wary eye on. “I’m a junkie, have been for most of my life and will be for the rest of my life. You knew it from the start, so hand that over and let’s pretend you saw nothing. I’m not taking it all at once. I know what I’m doing.”
I had no doubt about that, but…
I went for the doors. His harsh footsteps followed. I could have yelled, could have sent out a message, woken the whole habitat, but that would ruin him. I could ruin him. I should. It was the bestoption.
I kept running.
Outside the habitat, I sprinted for the incinerator. The suns had set. My eyes didn’t adjust to the dark, and I tripped. Roys was there. He had his hands on me, no longer in the way we caught one another at night, a fierceness took him, a desperation unlike any other, that could destroy us. I got the vials out of the pack as soon as he snatched it.
“Lucky,” he growled. The name never sounded so brutal.
I shoved my elbow into his gut. Roys doubled over, coughing. I got free and bolted, hoping he was too out of it to think of stunning me with that blaster. The incinerator was ahead. Just a little further.
“Stop! I need them. Lucky, please. You don’t understand.” His pleading didn’t last with us rounding the habitat to see the incinerator. His voice went low, sinister, menacing. “Fucking stop! It’s none of your business. You’re maddening, you know that? Seeming to care one minute and telling me off the next. Stop fucking around!”
Roys threw his body forward. His hands grabbed my ankles. I hit the ground. He was on top of me in an instant. He reached for the vials, pressing his full weight on my back. I rolled us, and his legs wrapped around my waist, and an arm around my shoulders. I pushed off the ground. His weight nearly sent us back down, but I needed a moment. Just one before he remembered the blaster. I threw the vials on the ground and shattered them with the heel of my boot. Roys’ hold slackened.
“What did you do?” He fell to his knees. “What the fuck did you do? Why… I… I need that. Lucky, Lucky, I need that.”
I grabbed him under the shoulders at the same moment he dug his hands into the soil.
“Let go. Let me go,” he muttered, yanking out of my grasp. His fingers dug into the earth before I grabbed him again. “What gives you the right?I was going to take two more. Just a few more little hits and I would have been good. You ruined it. You asshole!”
My heart twisted, agonized and screaming. Roys pivoted, eyes blazing. They weren’t his. They were of rage and desperation. Standing, he drew back his fist. I should have expected it. His fist cracked against my nose. There was a horrifying crunch. Blood poured over my lips into my mouth. My sight blurred, searing pain and head spinning. I slumped to my knees, as did Roys, the glass cutting his fingers as he tried to drink what he could as if that would give him the same hit.
I grabbed the blaster from his waist. He didn’t even react. Putting it on stun, my hands trembled as I shot him in the back. Roys collapsed, and all went still. Silent. Like nothing happened. The universe witnessed this catastrophe and kept moving, uncaring of all.
I knelt there, unsure if the tears came from my broken nose or having to see him hunched over in the dirt, glass embedded in his fingers, grief on his face for something that ravaged him. I wanted to fix it all, to tape up his fingers and wipe the grief away with a swipe of my thumb.
“Idiot,” I whispered, unsure of whom I spoke to.
I sank forward to press my lips against the earth and screamed. The soil muffled the sounds ripping through my aching throat until I couldn’t make them anymore. Staggering to my feet, I spat blood onto the grass. My muscles ached as if we had run for ten clicks. I flexed my fingers, willing them and my tense muscles to unwind, but nothing could fix this drowning sensation.
Lifting Roys onto my back, I lugged him to his room where he had left the door open. I laid him on the bed and went to the bathroom to glimpse my ruin in the mirror. Eyes bloodshot and nose broken, blood stained my face, mixed with dirt and saliva. A mess.
“Idiot,” I whispered.
After using tissues to clog my nose, I returned to Roys where I picked glass from fingers I had come to know well. Never had they caused me this kind of harm, never had I expected to see them like this, never had I expected to be sitting on Roys’ bed packaging away his secrets like our shared trinkets. I didn’t think of what would happen tomorrow or the days after. If I did, I feared I would combust, that all the thoughts and feelings bubbling inside of me would explode and ruin me completely.
Afterward, I wandered into the med bay for healing spray.
“Med spray won’t heal a broken nose, you know that.”
I spun around, stomach sinking at the sight of Arana, her eyes half open and arms hugging her torso. She wore gray boxer shorts and a shirt one size too big. Her hair was a mess. She must have tried and failed to wipe the dried drool from her mouth.
“What happened?” She turned on the cradle. That was the only way I would heal my broken nose entirely, but I hadn’t wanted to risk turning it on. It didn’t make much noise, but the survey team was nearby. Maddy was nearby.
